As marketers look to the future in an uncertain economic and regulatory environment, it would be foolhardy to neglect the increasingly vital role that third-party data will play in helping them maintain connections with their existing customers and forge new ones. Let’s take a deeper dive into why the role of third-party data is going to grow — not diminish — in 2023 and beyond.

The acquisition imperative

The idea that marketers can solve for the future on the strength of first-party data alone is unrealistic even in ideal circumstances. In a time of economic constraint, it’s downright ludicrous. After all, while first-party data is a tremendous asset when it comes to maintaining existing customer relationships and promoting loyalty, repeat purchases and lifetime value, its utility is limited when it comes to acquiring new customers. And as a global recession looms over brands heading into 2023, new-customer acquisition is going to be more important than ever as consumers tighten their financial belts across the board.

By enriching first-party data with third-party insights, brands are able to unlock new dimensions within their existing customer files. But even more importantly, they’re able to gain deeper insights into their ideal customer profiles and — leveraging third-party data from established and compliant data partners — transform those insights into powerful lookalike audiences that can be used for acquisition efforts.

Cookieless preparations

As marketers look to shore up their acquisition and retention strategies in the face of economic uncertainty, they’re simultaneously tasked with preparing their systems and data approaches for the eventual complete deprecation of third-party cookies. In some marketing circles, this eventuality has been pointed to as yet another reason to prioritize first-party data above all else. But let’s be clear here: Third-party cookies are not the same thing as third-party data. And the deprecation of the former doesn’t take away from the latter in the slightest. In fact, as marketers lose third-party cookie data signals, they’re going to need to up-level their audience understandings elsewhere — and in most cases, that “elsewhere” is going to be via third-party insights.

Already, future-focused third-party data providers are standing by with solutions designed to help bridge the third-party cookie gap for marketers. Those that move faster than their competitors when it comes to embracing these solutions are the ones that will emerge with a decided edge in a cookieless landscape.

Regulatory Rubik’s cube

The fast-evolving and often-uncertain global privacy regulation landscape is yet another area where marketers have been told they will need to rely more on first-party data as they move into the future. But here again, we run into a situation where the real path forward as it relates to first- and third-party data is a “yes, and” scenario, not an “either, or” decision to be made.

As global, national and regional privacy regulations evolve, marketers are going to have to pivot when it comes to how they collect and use first-party customer data. At the same time, certain third-party data practices are going to evolve as well. Over time, we’re going to see that the foundation that underpins third-party data enrichment and modelling available to marketers is going to become more stable and transparent than ever—because of regulations, not in spite of them. That means marketers will have more reliable means than ever of supplementing their first-party understandings of customers.

Identifier fragmentation

Finally, let’s talk about the fast-evolving world of alternative audience identifiers. By now, almost everyone in our industry has acknowledged that there will be no one-to-one replacement for third-party cookies when it comes to connecting the dots on audience understanding. Rather, we’re going to continue to see more and more identifiers emerge within the industry, and the only real path forward for marketers will be to pursue a strategy of interoperability, versus the pursuit of one identifier to rule them all.

When it comes to enabling interoperability, here again we see the role of third-party data and data solutions become more important than ever. To move forward in a fragmented identifier landscape, marketers will need to align with third-party data providers that offer agnostic, flexible, interoperable solutions to onboarding and enriching their audience insights in a scalable way.

In the end, the marketing foundations of the future will be built on first-party data — but they’ll be enriched, activated and ultimately made successful through third-party data enrichment and extension. For marketers, it’s time to rebalance the scales and ensure their data strategies are poised for success on the first- and third-party fronts alike.